Maravi

Police up patrols ahead of Nc’wala

Police up patrols ahead of Nc’wala
Written by Christopher Miti in Chipata
Thursday, February 26, 2009 8:32:09 AM

POLICE in Eastern Province have intensified road patrols ahead of the Nc’wala traditional ceremony scheduled for this Saturday. Eastern Province police commanding officer Mary Chikwanda said her office would deploy a lot of police officers at Mutenguleni to maintain law and order.

“There will be a lot of people during this ceremony and as police, we will ensure that things move as expected. Drunken drivers will be arrested as we will also deploy a good number of officers at the ceremony,” said Chikwanda.

And Chipata mayor Sinoya Mwale has ordered vendors to move out of the streets so that the town is clean during the Nc’wala traditional ceremony of the Ngoni people.

Mwale said the district would be hosting a big ceremony and that the council would therefore ensure the town was clean.

He said the council was prepared to punish vendors that would not adhere to the directive through prosecution in the courts of law.

“The law allows us to prosecute the vendors that do not comply, so we will start taking them to court but as usual people will start complaining about that. My appeal to the vendors is that let them move out of the streets and go to the designated markets,” Mwale said. “We don’t want to see a situation where somebody has invested some money into a business then we go and confiscate their commodity and destroy it then at the end of the day it is the street vendor who loses, so let them abide by the council’s directive.”

He said the council would take the exercise of getting rid of street vendors in town as a continuous undertaking.

“I have put it that by the time the district will be hosting the ceremony, it should be clean because as you know, we will be receiving a lot of visitors,” said Mwale.

This year’s Nc’wala ceremony will be graced by President Rupiah Banda while South Africa’s ruling party African National Congress president Jacob Zuma has also confirmed his attendance at the annual event.

Labels: NC'WALA

posted by MrK @ 8:32 AM